Okay, you're gonna think I'm a jerk for saying this …

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… but now that I’ve actually had some time to puruse the “top 15 web analytics blogs” on Avinash’s list I can only say his criteria is massively flawed. Clearly there are more important criteria than a numerical ranking based on linkages from sites, something that recognizes A) authority, B) quality of content, C) uniqueness of content and D) overall value to the general web analytics community.

And no, I’m not whining because I come in near the 10th slot in Avi’s ranking system. See for yourself.

I don’t mean to be rude but:

Marshall Sponder doesn’t really post very much about web analytics, he just posts a lot and happens to have a nom-de-plume of “WebMetricsGuru”

I like what Neil Patel has to say, especially his RSS wish list (Neil call me, we should talk!) but only six of his hundred-odd posts are about web analytics and they’re all really about RSS-based analytics more or less

Travis Staut hasn’t posted anything since April 24th and the only web analytics content I can find on his site is really about Google Analytics dashboard views

I used to work with Frank Spillers and Frank doesn’t do “web analytics”, Frank is a usability guy. Plus, before his April 21, 2006 post on usability, Frank hadn’t posted since October of 2005!

I don’t know Ed Schipul very well (he’s educating me about microformats) but again, not very much on his site is really about web analytics (although I do like the picture of Jeffery pitching “Waiting …”)

Clint, okay, Clint is a web analytics blogger but even he might blanch at that assessment since he’s more about how the information is communicated, not so much the data content, etc.

Casanova’s like Clint, sort of web analytics but he renamed the blog “Coffee, Sun, Technology” and is as likely to post about shooter as he is web analytics topics.

Notice I’m not picking on the European bloggers. Obviously I don’t read enough French to understand what the hell is being said but the fact that Aurelie and Rene aren’t on the list is quite suspect …

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand, where are Eric Butler, Steven Jackson and Blackbeak, Matt Jacobs, the guys at ROI Revolution … these and a few others I don’t actually read seem to be obviously missing from the list when you consider authority, content quality and overall contribution to the larger analytics community.

“Amazingly the results show this blog as #1 in the field, which is another sign that using Technorati ranking alone is probably not the best way to measure, as I know there are some other web analytics blogs which have more authority in the industry than this blog.”

Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Avi isn’t onto something neat with his idea of using metrics to “satiate [his] curiosity and also to create a handy list of resources for people interested in web analytics.” I just think that the using Technorati rankings is the wrong way to go about it.

I would propose that any “top 10” list of any type of content should be derived from a slightly more complex equation than one’s ability to get inbound links to their site. How about an equation that would include:

Number of external citations relevant to the topic of web analytics

Blogger tenure

Author tenure in the web analytics arena

Traffic volume to the weblog (subscribers and post reads, both in the blog and in RSS readers)

Volume of comments generated

I’m sure we could come up with other criteria but in this regard I do disagree with Avinash’s comment “Simplicity always wins over complexity, because what people understand better they are more likely to action” regarding the generation of any such list. Not everyone understands exactly how books are added to the New York Times Bestsellers list (okay, Bryan and Jeffery do) but largely we still respect that list. Few people truly understand how analysts rank technology and companies financial health but those reports sure do seem to have an impact on the marketplace. Nobody really understands how the Bowl College Series (BCS) ranks football teams but, well, okay, maybe that’s a crappy example …

Anyway, I skipped Jon Stewart to rant and rant I have. To Avinash’s credit he’s getting people talking about the subject of web analytics, something I absolutely condone. I just think that when you start ranking and filing, especially given our general prediliction towards analysis, more work could be done on his list (now that I actually took the time to read the thing, my bad.)

And have no doubt, Avi is the number one web analytics blogger out there today far and away … he’s killing it! Congrats again to Avinash for stirring up the hornet’s nest. Avinash Kaushik for one is no Fred McMurry!

Agree? Disagree? Hate me for questioning Avinash? Comment away …

16 Comments

Avinash KaushikJune 16th, 2006

I’ll be the first to comment Eric. I don’t like the title of your blog. You are not a jerk. Respectful healthy debate is good and your post is exactly that and if you were “attacking” me, I welcome that. In fact it is a honor to be attacked by such a well respected authority in our field such as yourself.

My post was both a primer in making choices and a quick lesson in reporting and how hard it is to good reporting. You have added to that debate by providing some great flaws of my methodology (in addition to the ones I had pointed to in my blog post) which is great.

I had six tips, which I used for my list (quoted from my post): 1. Global standards and benchmarks are great because people buy into them more easily

2. Simplicity always wins over complexity, because what people understand better they are more likely to action

3. Judgment should be applied with a lot of careful consideration because reasonable people might disagree with someone they don’t know

4. In any report context is king, provide the right context

5. Be aware of hidden agendas, your’s and those of others

6. Be open and up front with your assumptions

Of all of the above, and after digesting your feedback, I would still do exactly what I did and stress #1, #3 and #5.

I think the criteria you are suggested are great, but since no one on earth knows I exist I was going for credibility and my hypothesis was that independence (from my opinions) would earn me the attention of my dear readers. That’s it.

Also it was my bet that my criteria would drive quality over time, everyone wants to be loved and on the list. I noticed yesterday that three sites who did not make it to my list because they were not coded right (including yours) would be now on the list because they have fixed technorati tags, which is fabulous because it means you’ll be on my list in July.

It would have been easy for me to create a list where I showed up first, and I would, but that was not the point. 🙂

Thanks again for the opportunity to engage in respectful healthy debate Eric.

-Avinash.PS: I will disagree with you on one small point: Marshall (WebMetricsGuru) is very much a relevant web analytics blogger. And he is web analytics. Every single post he makes is somehow connected to numbers and, as I mentioned in one of my posts, he makes it fun by running hitwise numbers on Angelina’s baby or teaching about mrasuring search demand by using the Stanley Cup example.

Besides there are no “pure play” web analytics bloggers, we all have our indulgences and we are off topic so much (self included).

ClintJune 16th, 2006

Don’t you think contribution to the WA community outside of a blog should count too? I mean, who else has started up something like the Yahoo! group or WAW. I know these were somewhat self-serving, but it’s enlightened self interest, and have grown far beyond your goal of selling books.

But then again, maybe that takes us out of the ‘top bloggers’ arena to ‘top web analytics philanthropists’ or some such thing.

Oh, that reminds me, shouldn’t the Yahoo! group be the number 1? I would hope that our collective intelligence, kept in that forum, would be, by far, the ultimate authority.

EricJune 16th, 2006

Robbin, excellent points! I think you’re talking about the quality of content in the blog when you say “no reblogging” and “no selling” (something that ** some people ** only seem to do, even when they’re trying to make a valid point.) And I agree, some of the people you list are very valuable contributors to the body of knowledge on web analytics in the blogosphere — I could I have left Mike Keyes off the list!

Thanks for your comments!

Michael HarrisonJune 16th, 2006

I think one thing that Avinash has done, perhaps by accident, is highlight one of the drawbacks of folksonomy. As soon as he posted, I’m sure a number of folks re-evaluated their presence on Technorati. I know that we discovered that, despite showing for a number of useful tags, we had somehow forgotten “web analytics,” Avinash’s “cleanest tag.”

It didn’t take us long to add that one to our profile, and install a plugin to ensure that we can manually tag our blog entries for Technorati purposes. If you do a search today for “web analytics” in Technorati, it’s a somewhat different list than it was a week ago.

EricJune 16th, 2006

Avinash,

First, thanks for taking the time to comment! I didn’t intend the title of the post to be anything but a tounge-in-cheek reference to the tremendous good will you’ve been able to amass at Occam’s Razor in just a few short weeks. Bravo!

In terms of your comments, perhaps we’ll just agree to disagree on this point because I suspect that your July list will very strongly resemble your current list with a few additions but with the same level of detail re: total content quality left out of the mix. I may be wrong about Marshall Sponder, okay, but your criteria are ripe to be gamed by technology.

Case in point: What if a vendor (does not have to be web analytics) blogged infrequently and every post was either a weak sales effort or a poorly obfuscated attempt to drive attention away from their own techical shortcomings. Any reasonable person would argue that the content quality was “poor”. But what if this vendor included a link to their weblog in every piece of marketing material they put out, thusly inserting their URL on a large number of sites without actually doing anything to earn such placement. Technorati, I suspect, would rank this vendor quite high, causing some people to derive incorrect conclusions about the blogger or the content of his or her weblog.

All I’m saying is that I very much appreciate your attempt to remove bias from the equation–you’ve made a noble attempt. I just think that perhaps you’ve stumbled into a gross over-simplification. Just my opinion.

Oh, why can I not seem to duplicate your list at Technorati? Can you send me or post the URL that generates your list?

THANKS for your comments!

EricJune 16th, 2006

Clint,

Your comment:

“Don’t you think contribution to the WA community outside of a blog should count too? I mean, who else has started up something like the Yahoo! group or WAW.“

Um, yeah, but like Avi said the criteria should at least try and be fair. I could have just as easily established criteria like “number of books on the subject the blogger has published” but, well, you get the point.

EXCELLENT point about the Yahoo! group being the number one “weblog” about web analytics. Did you run that idea by Avi? I’m thinking that group cannot be “claimed” by technorati (another shortcoming in the utility of that tool) so a similar analysis could not be performed.

Thanks for your comments!

EricJune 16th, 2006

Lars, thanks for your comments! I like Avinash too!

LunaMetrics BlogJune 16th, 2006

How about, for your list of metrics:

No reblogging

No selling in every single blog.

I *really* agree with your Eric Butler comment. ROI Revolution. Matt Belkin (you forgot that one), although he just doesn’t blog enough, I should send him some more ideas. On the Trail (another great blogger who doesn’t write enough.) The Site is Dead (although you could fairly say that Matt writes more about A/B testing since that’s what Offermatica does.) Am sorry that I don’t have the time to create live links.

Robbin

Avinash KaushikJune 16th, 2006

Eric:Oh, why can I not seem to duplicate your list at Technorati? Can you send me or post the URL that generates your list?I had included the link in my blog post, simply click on “Technorati June 12”. Obviously that is a live link and if you click on it today you will see a different ranking list today.

You’ll notice both you and ROI Revolution are on there now (highlighting Michael Harrison’s point in his comment above).

Thanks.

-Avinash.

WebMetricsGuruJune 16th, 2006

Eric, if you don’t mean to be rude, don’t be. Avinash made his own list based on his own method, based on Technorati.

Since you don’t like Avinash’s ranking, attack Technorati, you don’t need to attack me or anyone on the list.

First of all, I did not pick the name “Webmetricsguru” for my blog, Know More Media did. And I did not know anything about Avinash’s ranking of the blogs till a couple of days after he posted.

Sure, I write about a lot of other things than Web Metrics – but also write a lot about Web Metrics. In my way of thinking, I see metrics as a way of thinking, and as much as I can, I try to make my blog about the “art” of measurement. Had I picked the name of my blog, it would have been “Art of Measurement” and not, WebmetricsGuru.

Still, if you don’t like Avinash’s list, why not make up one of your own….(where your blog is the top).

It’s all subjective (maybe more than it ought to be), which is why you should attack the method, not the people.

Neil PatelJune 16th, 2006

Hey Eric,

You should start seeing more analytics post in the near future. I also sent you an email.

EricJune 16th, 2006

Marshal, please accept my humble apologies. My analysis of the Technorati assignments of position was designed to point out the flaw in the method. By doing some very light uncovery I was able to show (at least in my mind) that the Technorati list is unconnected to quality of content and authority except in a few instances. That plus the fact that you have to add a special Technorati tag to your site to even be listed I believe completely marginalizes the value of the list.

I do apologize for trivializing your work, I don’t actually read your blog anymore–I unsubscribed due to the very high volume of posts that were irrelevant to my particular needs.

Thanks for commenting and congrats on having such a high Technorati ranking!

EricJune 16th, 2006

Michael, agreed. My concern is that we’ll all end up having to decide whether or not to spend an inordinate amount of time tagging and plugging-in and researching just to keep our rankings high in the various engines out there, yet another distraction from the actual work of blogging (something I’m admittedly bad at.)

In some ways I agree with Avi that a standard would be nice — one engine that we could all work against, kind of like everyone treats Google Search as the gold standard for SEO and SEM efforts. But, I don’t believe such a standard actually exists today. And again, I don’t think the “links in/sites linked” simplification captures enough of the essence of blogs to be truly useful metric.

If we’re going to use Technorati as a useful proxy for “popularity” then we first need a concerted effort to get every web analytics blogger to add all the necessary tags, etc.

EricJune 16th, 2006

Neil, excellent! I look forward to it. I’ve been doing some work at my day job to measure XML-encapsulated content and I was able to generate the metrics you’re looking for and more. Your thoughts on the subject helped guide some of my thinking so I’m in your debt.

Thanks for your comments!

LarsJune 16th, 2006

It must have been that specific post that bumped Avinash from first to fourth place on the list. I have to say that quality should come before quantity when ranking weblogs. Having said that, I like Avinash. He stands out from the crowd. Usually in a good way. Perhaps the biggest flaw is that Occam’s Razor wasn’t ranked higher. 😉

Rose SylviaNovember 19th, 2006

You’ve simply pointed out that human insight is not easily automated. Brilliance is generally best recognized by the brilliant and not easily identified by applying technology. Whether generated by human or machine, there is inherent bias in any evaluation method. When a computer gets anywhere near to approaching the number of variables the human mind applied subconsciously perhaps it can make recommendations almost as useful.

Eric T. Peterson is author of Web Analytics Demystified, Web Site Measurement Hacks and The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators and a long-time member of the web analytics community. He frequently presents on web analytics and is often cited in articles about digital measurement. In the past Mr. Peterson has worked with well-known brands like Microsoft, HP, Cisco, Best Buy, Disney, LEGO, CBS and CBS News, and ESPN. More recently, Mr. Peterson has founded The Analysis Exchange, a completely new way to gain experience with digital measurement.
As an employee of Analytics Demystified Eric is a member of the Digital Analytics Association (DAA), an Adobe Business Partner, and a Google Analytics Certified Partner.